


Little Lost Princess

by mcfair_58



Category: Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27479755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcfair_58/pseuds/mcfair_58
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Little Lost Princess

The Little Lost Princess

ONE

She had to find the wise woman’s cottage.   
The little brown-haired girl, decked out in her Sunday dress, with a chain of wildflowers around her neck and nettles in her hair, was making her way slowly through the whispering trees. She knew her parents would be angry with her, but it didn’t matter. She’d been a bad girl and bad girls had to go to the cottage so the wise woman could use her magic to turn them into good girls. It was getting dark and it was scary. The wind was blowing through the bare branches and they creaked and moaned above her head. She’d heard a wolf howl, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her.  
She was the king and queen’s daughter and a king and queen’s daughter wasn’t afraid.  
Five-year-old Carrie Celestia Ingalls drew in a deep breath and held it as the wolf howled again.  
Well, not much.

It was after supper and the Ingalls’ household was a hive of activity. Tomorrow was Sunday and there was a social after the service, and so there were clothes to be cleaned, pies to be made, and tidying up to do in case anyone came by the house afterward. Caroline Quiner Ingalls paused in what she was doing to shove her hair back out of her eyes. She’d put Carrie down for a nap and then set the older girls to their chores. They’d chosen to do the outside ones first and so, it was left to her to pick up the house. Saturday was a joyous day since the children were home, but it also made it hectic and left the house looking like a whirlwind had passed through. The kitchen was a mess from their help with the cooking, and there were toys and books strewn everywhere. The blonde woman had just finished cleaning the surface of the table and shoved one of the chairs in, only to find it stuck on something. With one hand on the top, she leaned down to look and discovered a book on the floor. Laura sometimes ‘borrowed’ her sister’s books and read them under the table where she was less likely to be discovered. At times Carrie would join her. It was the cutest picture.   
Other than the fact that Charles would have a conniption fit if he saw one of their few precious – and priceless – books on the floor!   
Caroline reached under the table and drew it out. The title made her smile. It was Mary’s copy of ‘The Lost Princess’, a moral tale by George MacDonald that had been given to her as a prize for winning a scripture quoting contest at church. The book told the story of two naughty girls, one of them a princess and the other a pauper, who were turned into delightful children through the ministrations of a mysterious wise woman in the woods. The story was a lesson for parents as well, about how to treat their children and rear them up in the way they should go. It was profusely illustrated and one of Mary’s most treasured possessions.  
No wonder Laura had been hiding!   
As she placed the book on the table’s surface, the door opened and her two older children blew in with the wind. They had just made it through the winter – by the skin of their teeth, Charles liked to say – and entered the month of March. It was coming in like a lion with gale-force winds and heavy rains. Caroline sighed as she watched Laura battle the door to close it. She was more than ready for it to go out like a lamb!   
“All done, Ma!” Laura announced cheerfully after hanging her coat on the peg by the door. “You need help cleaning up in here?”  
Caroline held the book out and cleared her throat.   
“Hey!” Mary said as she joined her sister. “I was looking for that. Where did you find it?”  
Caroline hid her smile. Laura’s big hazel eyes were pleading with her.   
It was of no use.  
Hands on her hips, her eldest turned toward her sister and said, accusation in her tone. “Laura….!”  
Laura shrugged. “So I borrowed your old book. Carrie likes the pictures.”  
“Borrowed? Took it more like!”  
“Laura,” Caroline said, “did you ask your sister’s permission to ‘borrow’ her book?”  
The little girl hung her head. “No, ma’am.”  
Mary was quickly leafing through the book. The corner of one page was slightly bent. “Look!” she exclaimed. “You ruined it!”  
“I did not ruin your old book! That page was already like that!”  
“No, it wasn’t!”  
Both turned to her at the same time and said, “Ma!”  
This time she swallowed the sigh.   
“First of all, Laura, you were wrong to take your sister’s book without asking.” At Mary’s smug and triumphant ‘hmmph!” she added, “And you, Mary are wrong to accuse your sister of something you know she didn’t do.”  
She, personally, had seen that bent page a week ago.  
Mary dropped her head. Laura beamed, and then did the same.   
“Sorry, Ma.”  
The door opened again, so strong this time that it lifted the corner of the table cloth and flapped it back over the wood. Charles leaned his back against it and let out an exclamation. “Whoo-ee! You’re mighty lucky, ladies, that I wasn’t blown into the next state before I made it to the house.”  
Charles had been out in the fields where there was little protection. His hair was, well…. Succinctly put, it looked like a rat’s nest. Not only were his curls a tangled mess, but intermingled in the brown locks was all manner of bracken.   
“The gate blew open,” he said at her look. “I had to wrassle the wind to get it back into place.” Her husband grinned. “I won, but the fight was fierce.”  
“Come over here and sit down. I’ll get a comb.”  
“Let me do it, Ma,” Laura said. “I love to play with Pa’s hair.”  
“I am not playing. I’m…winnowing,” she said with a twist of her mouth.   
Mary was looking at her book. “Laura’s right, Ma. Carrie does love the pictures. Can I go show them to her?”  
“I put your sister down for a nap after supper.”  
“Carrie sure was naughty tonight,” Laura agreed with a shake of her head.   
“Yes. That’s why I sent her to bed. I thought a short nap would do her good.” She’d already begun to pick Charles’ hair clean. Caroline halted in mid-pick. “I would have thought she’d have been up by now.”  
“I can check for you, Ma,” Laura offered.   
“No. Mary, you can go since you asked first.”  
Laura’s little shoulders rose and fell with defeat. “I guess that leaves me to clean up.”  
Caroline smiled. “I guess it does.”  
It wasn’t thirty seconds later that Mary reappeared. The look on her young face stopped them all in their tracks.   
“Mary?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”  
“Ma!” the little girl exclaimed. “Carrie isn’t in her bed!”

If the Ingalls household had been a hive of activity before, now it became a vortex. They searched the house from ceiling to root cellar and then moved on to the outbuildings. Charles ordered them all back into the house as night fell and continued searching, moving in concentric circles until he’d covered the yard and the fields.   
Carrie was nowhere to be found.   
In the end they all retreated back to the house, weary and wind-blown. Charles was at the door now, winding a scarf around his neck. He’d donned his winter coat and was headed out again. At the edge of the yard he’d found one of Carrie’s dolls abandoned and a few strings of daisies that had somehow clung to ground in spite of the wind. He thought he knew the path she was taking as it was one he often took with the children when they headed into the woods. He’d taught them all, Carrie included, how to survive if they became lost. There was a cave that was not too far off, near a pile of rocks in the shape of a horse. He’d shown it to them and it was their prayer now that their youngest daughter had remembered how to find it and would be waiting there.   
Caroline walked over to her husband and handed him the lantern she held. Her eyes moved beyond him to the window and the wild woolly night.  
“Oh, Charles. I can’t bear to think of Carrie out there alone,” she breathed.  
“I’d like to know what got into her head,” he replied, his tone edgy. “I taught her better.”  
“Charles, you know children. There’s always a logic to what they do. It’s just not our logic.”  
His gaze flicked to Laura and Mary who were sitting by the fire warming themselves. Then it returned to her. “I know,” he said softly. “I just…. You and the girls were in danger, being out there.”  
“We’re here. We’re fine.” She touched his cheek. “It’s you I’m worried about as well as Carrie.”  
“I’ll be fine,” he said as he opened the door.   
“Charles, wait,” she said and then disappeared into the room where Carrie slept. She returned with their littlest girl’s winter coat, mitts, and a set of muffs for her ears.   
Charles teared up as he took them.   
She placed a hand on his arm. “You’ll find her.”  
Her husband nodded and then, without another word, stepped outside. 

She wasn’t sure which little girl she was, since both of them in Mary’s storybook had been bad, but Carrie Ingalls knew she wanted her ma and pa to come looking for her just like the king and queen did for them. Rosamond got lost in the woods when she left the wise woman’s magic cottage. She wandered around for a long time until she was hungry and sick. The little girl shivered as the wolf howled again. She didn’t know how it happened, but she was lost too.   
Maybe Rosamond didn’t know how it happened either.  
She was sorry now she’d made her ma mad. It just seemed like all the time Laura and Mary got all the attention, so she’d decided to get some attention too. She’d tried pulling on her ma’s skirt, but that just got her scolded. Then she tried to help Ma cook, but that got her scolded again for being too close to the stove. When she plunked her bottom down three feet away and started to talk, she got shushed. So, in the end, while Ma was cooking and Mary and Laura were helping and chattering away, she decided that if the only attention she could get was because she did something bad, well then, she’d just do it.   
Of course, she could have picked something better than taking hold of the tablecloth and pulling on it until one of Ma’s china dishes fell off and broke all into pieces.   
Carrie put a hand to her backside.   
She wasn’t gonna do that again!   
The little girl shivered. She’d forgot her coat and it was cold and the wind was howling just like the wolf. It cut through her Sunday dress and made her eyes tear so it was hard to see where she was going. She didn’t really know where she was going, but things looked familiar and she remembered her pa showing her and Laura and Mary a cave behind a rock horse and she was trying to find it.  
She sure hoped Pa – just like the king – was trying to find his little lost princess. 

Charles fought his fear as much as the wind as he made his way through the woods. His youngest was a quiet child, much more so than her sisters. She often got lost in the shuffle. Mary was quiet too, but her achievements brought her attention. Charles smiled. Laura drew attention all by herself. She was vocal and boisterous and, truth to tell, needy. Carrie was a happy child with few needs.   
Or so they thought.  
Caroline had told him about what happened. She didn’t understand, but he did. Carrie had been vying for attention the entire afternoon and, when she didn’t get it, had done something to warrant it. He understood because he’d been the same. In the midst of a family of nine children it was hard to be noticed. As one of the oldest, he was expected to step back and leave it all to his sisters and brothers. So, every once in a while, he would do something that caused his parents to despair – and get their attention. Their littlest one’s personality had yet to form completely, but Charles was beginning to worry that she would be just like him.   
His little princess.   
He’d chanced by Carrie’s room one day not all that long ago when Laura was in there. Laura had ‘borrowed’ one of her sister’s books again. She wasn’t reading to the little girl, but telling her parts of the story as she turned the pages and showed her the brilliantly colored pictures that illustrated it. It was a moral tale about two naughty girls, a princess and a pauper, who end up getting switched. Both of them are taken and taught by a wise woman who makes them into good children and, in the end, chastises their parents for doing everything wrong.   
Had they done something wrong?   
It was hard not to doubt yourself when your five-year-old child decided to take herself off into the woods. What had Carrie been thinking? She knew better. He’d taken her along every time he’d led his older girls into the woods, trying his best to teach them how to survive should they ever become lost. Did Carrie think she was that little princess in the book? Could she have been looking for the wise woman for some reason?   
Charles halted in his tracks. Carrie had been naughty. The wise woman knew how to fix that.   
Like Caroline said, children had their own kind of logic.   
As he began to walk again, a wolf howled not all that far in the distance. They were hungry this year. The tornado had stripped the land bare, leaving them little to subsist on.  
Charles picked up his pace. 

  
TWO

Carrie had found the cave. It wasn’t warm, but it was warmer than outside in the wind, and being in it made her feel safe. She’d run the last part of the way because the wolf scared her. She saw him once. He was a dirty gray and had a toothy smile and big round yellow eyes.   
Pa told them wolves didn’t eat people, but she knew better. A wolf had eaten Little Red Riding Hood and she didn’t want this one to eat her.   
Now, she was afraid he’d come into the cave. There was no door to close, so nothing could stop him. Pa told them wolves didn’t like fire, but she didn’t have a fire and she didn’t have any way to make one. She didn’t have anything. Not her coat or hat or mitts or a blanket to wrap up in or a fire or her sisters or her ma and pa. She wanted all those things, but she wanted one thing more than anything.   
She wanted to go home. 

The wolf’s cry had a strange hollow sound to it that put Charles nerves on edge. Rabid wolves were rare, but not unknown in these parts. The disease usually came as the result of a fox or dog bite. When a wolf went rabid, it was a greater danger than the other two put together. Rabid wolves tended to hunt alone and would strike with very little provocation. The curly-headed man shuddered as he brushed a branch aside. He didn’t bring his gun. He didn’t think he’d need it. After all, he was looking for a little girl who had wandered into the woods near her home.   
What an idiot.   
As he walked, the worried father kept an eye out for a branch suitable to make a club. If the wolf was following Carrie – and he had to fight it off – he was going to need a weapon. Any normal wolf would run when it saw him. Carrie was an easy target. Him, not so much. But if the wolf was rabid it’s reasoning would be skewed. It would attack him as surely as it would his daughter. One bite and….   
Charles shuddered to think about it. They’d been through this before, not all that long ago. There was no cure for hydrophobia.   
What would his girls do – all four of them – if the infectivity took him and he died? He’d seen a man succumb to it before, when he was a teenager. The man had been bitten by his own dog. His decline started with a raging fever, followed quickly by confusion and hallucinations, and then paralysis and death. It was a horrible death. Not something he would want his loved ones to see.   
Even though he knew they would never leave his side.   
Charles halted where he was. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The words from a sermon Robert Alden had delivered several weeks before rang in his ears. ‘Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.’  
His eyes opened. “All right, Lord,” the farmer said, his tone hushed. “I’m gonna take you at your word that you’re with me. You be with Carrie too and lead me to her.”  
There was no reply, of course, but the wind rose and carried with it the howl of a dying wolf.   
Charles began to run. 

The wolf was standing just outside the mouth of the cave.   
He was staring at her.   
Carrie shrunk back as far as she could against the back wall and held still. Pa’d showed them what to do one time if something threatened them and they’d all laughed at him ‘cause he looked silly. He backed up against a rock wall and made himself flat as a pancake. Eyes wide, he’d pretended to start shaking but didn’t move. He told them if they were ever in the woods and they thought something would hurt them to do the same. Find a cave. Go in.   
Hide in the dark.  
The little girl let out a little sigh. It was more fun when they were pretending.   
Pa’d told them to count when they were afraid. He’d said thinking about something other than the big nasty scary thing they were afraid of would help. But she couldn’t count past ten and she didn’t know all of her ABCs, so she tried to think of something else to think about. “Jack,” Carrie said under her breath. “Pat. Patty. Whitey. Mister Edwards. Reverend Alden. Doctor Baker. Ma. Pa.”   
The wolf took a step into the cave.   
“PA!!”

Charles had just reached the cave when he heard Carrie scream. He dashed around the long arm of the rocking horse rocks and found the wolf was there – between him and his child. The animal turned toward him and snarled; showing its yellow teeth and sallow eyes. It was a gangrel creature, with a dirty matted coat through which its ribs showed. There was a wild look in its eyes that he recognized – a fevered look that made it doubly dangerous.   
“PA!!!”  
“Carrie!” he called out. “You stay where you are! You hear me?!”  
“Pa! I….”  
“That’s an order!” he shouted. “You stay where you are!”  
Her reply was small. He almost missed it.  
“Yes…sir.”  
Charles couldn’t help but smile even as he advanced on the animal. He stopped a few feet of it as it crouched and snarled.   
“Now, see here,” he said, his tone even, “I don’t want to hurt you….” He drew a breath. The animal was obviously in distress. He felt for it, but he had a duty to perform. “But I’m gonna have to. I’m…gonna have to put you down before you hurt someone.”  
The wolf lowered its head so it lay between its outstretched paws. A sure sign it was about to attack. He had no choice. He had to move now! He would only have one chance and the strike had to be clean.   
With a shout Charles raised the branch and charged the animal. 

Carrie had crawled into the deepest darkest corner of the cave. The king had come to rescue her just like in the story, but this was different. She wasn’t Rosamond. She was Red Riding Hood. So that meant Pa was the hunter.   
There was a wolf and he was hungry just like the one in the story and he was going to eat her Pa!   
Her hands were wrapped tightly around her eyes. She couldn’t look, but she could hear. The wolf snarled and snapped. Pa shouted. The wolf cried out.  
It was silent.   
Carrie shivered and shook. Tears streamed out of her eyes and ran through her fingers. She’d been naughty before, but she’d been wicked for going into the woods to look for the wise woman.   
She’d killed her pa!  
Then, the little girl felt someone take hold of her hands.   
“Hey there,” a familiar voice said softly.   
Carrie blinked. She frowned. Then she lowered her hands – just a bit – and looked over them.   
What she saw wasn’t possible.  
Her pa smiled. “Hey there, little lost princess,” he said as he pulled her hands away.   
“Pa?”  
He nodded. “Yep.”  
Carrie’s gaze went to the cave mouth. “The wolf?”  
“Gone. You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”  
She reached out to touch her father’s face. He was real. Pa wasn’t something out of a dream.  
She was found.

Caroline let the curtain drop and turned back into the room with a sigh. Charles had been gone nearly three hours. It was well after midnight and she’d sent the girls to bed, though she doubted they were asleep – unless they’d cried themselves into it. She’d done a good deal of crying too, and pacing, and pleading with her Lord for her husband and her youngest’s safe return.   
“Any word, Ma?” a soft voice called from the loft.   
The blonde woman looked up to find two cherubic faces looking down at her.  
“You’re supposed to be asleep,” she chided.  
The two of them exchanged a glance. “We can’t sleep until we know Carrie and Pa are home,” Mary said.   
Caroline nodded. “I know,” she said, “but there’s no need for all of us to be exhausted. Please try to – “ A sound stopped her. She turned toward the door.   
It opened.   
And Charles stepped in with Carrie in his arms.   
As a whoop went up from the two little girls in the loft and they headed for the loft ladder, she took a good look at the two of her husband and their youngest. Both of them were exhausted. Carrie’s eyes were barely open. Charles were drooping too, but there was something there; something that told her there was a tale yet to be told.   
“I found her in the cave,” he said. “She was a good little girl. She remembered what her Pa told her.”  
Carrie blinked at the sound of his voice and roused. She looked around, realized she was home, saw her, mother and opened her arms wide. Charles was reluctant to surrender her, but he smiled as the little girl settled in her arms.  
And was smothered with kisses.  
A moment later the troops arrived and she was nearly bowled over as her older daughters wrapped their arms around each other with her in-between.   
Charles started laughing. “Give your Ma some air, you three!”  
She didn’t mind. They were all home and each and every one of them was safe and sound.   
What more could she ask?

After the girls were settled, Caroline returned to the common room. Charles was sitting in front of the fire, smoking his pipe. He hadn’t changed and was still in the clothes he’d worn into the woods. They, and well as his curly hair, were littered with dirt and debris.   
“Would you like me to help you get undressed?” she asked, assuming fatigue had driven him to the rocking chair.   
He shook his head. “I can do it.”  
She sat in the chair beside him. “Why are you still up?”  
Charles looked at her. He reached out and took her hand. “Just thanking the Lord.”  
“You never told me what happened. You said Carrie was in the cave, but there was something more?”  
He nodded. “A wolf.”  
“Oh, Charles!”  
“It was sick, Caroline. I had to…put it out of its misery.”  
“Hydrophobia?” she asked. They’d been through it the year before. With Laura and her raccoon. Though that turned out to be a hollow threat.  
He nodded. “It had it.”  
“Charles….” Terror gripped her.  
“It didn’t bite me, or Carrie.” He shook his head. “Poor thing. It was nearly done.”  
“God was watching out for you – both of you.”  
Charles nodded again. Then he laughed. “Do you know what Carrie said when I picked her up and carried her out of the cave?”  
She shook her head. “What?”  
“She knew the king would come.”  
“The king?”  
Charles leaned over and picked up the picture book that was laying on the hearth at his side. He showed it to her. It was ‘The Little Lost Princess’ by MacDonald.   
“Seems she thought she’d been naughty, so she went looking for the wise woman in the woods who could make her nice.” He sighed. “You know, Caroline, as a wise man once said, I don’t have anything against education, so long as it doesn’t interfere with your thinkin’.”  
Caroline pursed her lips. “Maybe we should put that book up until Carrie is a little older?”  
“Maybe.”  
The blonde woman rose to her feet. “Come now, Charles. You look exhausted. It’s time to go to bed.”  
He rose slowly to his feet. “I bet you feel special,” he said as they headed for their room.  
“Why?”  
“It’s not every night you get to bed down with royalty.”  
_____  
END


End file.
